Countering the Weapons of Our Enemy

By Ed Offley

It seemed to be the ending of one war, but it was actually the bare beginning of another when I walked out onto the flightline at Mombasa Airport one morning in December 1992. I had just finished a week of reporting on the multi-national “Operation Provide Relief” in Somalia, and had returned to the Kenyan seaport town with a small group of journalists and military escorts preparing for the long flight home.

A familiar silhouette caught my eye and I walked over to the Navy EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft parked in the sunshine, and found two Navy aviators conducting a pre-flight inspection. The four-seat, 60-foot-long Prowler was a familiar sight to me, since its only Navy home air station was in Washington state, where I then worked as a military reporter.

I introduced myself to the pilot and naval flight officer, then with a grin asked how the Navy was employing an electronic jamming aircraft against a failed country that had not had any measurable electricity in over a year (I had personally seen the ravaged former U.S. embassy in Mogadishu three days earlier, where looters had literally stripped the wiring out of the building to steal its copper).

The pilot, a young lieutenant, grinned back: “We’re adapting to the new threat environment,” he said. “Climb up and look for yourself.”

I mounted the ladder and looked in the aft cockpit where normally two electronics countermeasures officers would sit manipulating the aircraft’s sensitive receiving antennas and powerful jamming pods. Piled to the cockpit rim were bags of mail for the USS Kitty Hawk carrier battle group 100 miles offshore.

Neither the aviators, nor I, nor the Pentagon knew at that time that an obscure terrorist organization named al Qaeda was planning to send fighters to train Somali fighters in ambush tactics that they would use against Task Force Ranger in October 1993, an event that we now recognize as the first battle of the current war against terrorism.

Memories of that chance encounter came to mind this week as the U.S. news media began ramping up its planned saturation coverage of the events of 9/11/02 and the ongoing war against the new super-terrorists of the 21st century.

What occurred a year ago has been described in minute detail as a government-wide failure to anticipate the new threat that suicidal hijackers could achieve with several hundred thousand dollars, several years of careful planning, and the steely resolve to kill thousands of innocent civilians and themselves in an orchestrated series of attacks.

That much is as obvious as the gaping hole where the World Trade Center Towers once stood in lower Manhattan.

But remembering my encounter with the Prowler and its crew, I began to wonder: Have we – the U.S. intelligence community, the armed forces, the broad array of other federal agencies, and Americans in general – even begun to realign our sensors to pick up advance indications of the next attacks that al Qaeda is dedicated to carrying out against us?

One recurring stream of information in the media that has appeared this week is the reconstructed narrative of how the hijackers – particularly the four pilots – traveled from their home countries to Europe, then to Afghanistan, and back to the West as they refined and prepared their suicidal mission. The PBS program, Frontline re-aired on Monday a chilling story, “Inside the Terror Network,” that focused on three of the terrorists, Mohammad Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi – while The Washington Post on Tuesday published an updated profile of the pilot who attacked the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour.

In all four cases, there is a common pattern of events, where a seemingly “normal” young Muslim man – and all of them came from middle-class families in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates – came to the West for education but instead of flourishing in the free world, became alienated, self-isolated and consumed with a growing hatred of the environment in which they temporarily lived.

Some of the most poignant elements of the Frontline program concerned to comments of family relatives and friends of the young Lebanese student, Ziad Jarrah, brought back from the dead via family home videos to appear as a slender, shyly smiling young man dancing at the wedding of a cousin, and described by several acquaintances as a studious, intelligent person who wanted to study aircraft engineering and to become a pilot himself.

But Jarrah and the others do not merit our sorrow. They rushed willingly into the arms of the murderous Islamic ideology that has been spawned by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants – an ideology that declares there can be no peace between Islam and non-Islam, and a belief structure that recognizes total violence against men, women and children, not for what they do, but for who we are. It was Jarrah, after all, the shy and gangly former student, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and the other brave passengers rushed the cockpit in a counterattack that saved the U.S. Capitol at the cost of their own lives.

Ayman Muhammad al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s shadowy No. 2 official, was as clear as the Manhattan skyline a year ago today when he argued in a tract published last December the need to escalate the violence and severity of future terrorist attacks far beyond the level of 9/11: 

“(1) The need to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent, for this is the language understood by the West, no matter how much time and effort such operations take.

“(2) The need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the mujahiddin in terms of casualties.

“(3) The targets as well as the type and method of weapons used must be chosen to have an impact on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its brutality, arrogance and disregard for all [Islamic] taboos and customs ….

Call it information warfare, call it psychiatric assessments, call it profiling, it is imperative that we mobilize all assets available to prevent such stealth terrorists from launching more attacks. To do that, we must first recognize that it is the ideology of al Qaeda that is the actual weapon that this terror network wields against us. The aircraft and GPS receivers and box cutters were merely a means to a deadly end.

First and foremost, we need to take the offensive in exposing the ideological flaws of al Qaeda’s ideology (as detailed in separate articles in this issue of DefenseWatch magazine by Robert G. Williscroft and Christian M. Weber).

Equally urgent, however, as the federal government continues to search inside the United States and in foreign countries for the hundreds of al Qaeda cells still in hiding, we urgently need to deploy a new system of sensitive receivers – like the antennas on that EA-6B relegated to mail duty – that can successfully locate, identify and track the other terrorists who are still out there.

Only then can we neutralize and defeat the enemy who still intends to kill us.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

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Far from U.S. Soil, Americans Still Targeted

By J. David Galland

Last week, in the outskirts of Heidelberg Germany, German police arrested a Turkish man and his American fiancée after receiving a tip from U. S. authorities that the pair were allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on U.S. military personnel and facilities.

Their target was one of the oldest U.S. military facilities in Europe, dating back to the last days of World War II. Heidelberg is home of the U.S. Army European Headquarters and an American military population of approximately 16,000 soldiers, family members and U.S. government employees.

Far from the U.S. homeland still recovering from the 9/11 attacks, American military families now know that they, too, remain the target of terrorists.

Heidelberg is no stranger to terrorism, although few today recall the May 1972 murder of U.S. Army Capt. Clyde Bonner at Campbell Barracks in the center of Heidelberg by The Baader-Meinhoff terrorist gang, an organization that reflected the Cold War terrorist spin-off involving violent leftists dedicated to communist victory.

This time it was, in all likelihood, our new enemy: a plot by sympathizers of the al Qaeda terrorist network to strike on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Acting on a tip to U.S. officials, the FBI reportedly passed on information to German police, who last Thursday arrested a member of the American community and her Turkish fiancée, and seized 287 pounds of bomb-making chemicals, that would have yielded 44 pounds of TNT, according to German investigators, and five pipe bombs, electrical detonators and a bomb-making manual. Also found in their apartment was a photograph of Osama bin Laden.

The accused terrorists, Astrid Eyzaguirre, 23, and Osman Petmezi, 25, remained in custody this week as U.S. military officials in Europe maintained a heightened security posture in advance of the first anniversary of 9/11 today.

What is chilling about this last-minute discovery is that Eyzaguirre and Petmezi had legitimate access to materials and U.S. military locations that would have made them capable of carrying out deadly attacks against Americans in Heidelberg.

Petmezi reportedly works for the Chemische Werke Kluthe GmbH factory, which is a chemical warehouse in the Heidelberg suburb of Wieblingen. Petmezi’s employer, Ralph Zimmermann, stated that the firm produces cleaning products and paint thinners and that he was not aware that any chemicals or materials had been missing.

Ms. Eyzaguirre is an American civilian employee of the Heidelberg Class VI store that primarily sells alcoholic beverages and snacks. The store is located on the U.S.-controlled reservation known as the main Post Exchange shopping center about five miles from the main American housing area.

Ms. Eyzaguirre’s civilian employee ID card provided her unfettered access to any U.S. military installation, including the USAREUR headquarters complex at Campbell Barracks.

Details of the alleged plot and its detection have steadily emerged in the six days since their arrest.

One German news magazines reported over the weekend that a friend of Eyzaguirre’s informed U.S. military police that the suspect had personally warned her to stay away from the military shopping area for the next few days.

The following day, police raided the same shopping center where Eyzaguirre worked and arrested two ethnic Albanians employed there. One of the men was also a civilian employee with the U. S. Army and was working as a barber, approximately 300 feet from where Eyzaguirre was employed. The Stars and Stripes military newspaper reported unconfirmed allegations that plans for Campbell Barracks were found in one of the men’s cars.

German authorities are evaluating the possibility that the four individuals were part of a terrorist cell operating in Heidelberg.

Meanwhile, neighbors of the arrested couple told local reporters of several incidents that took place in recent months. Two months ago one neighbor said, a few drops of some liquid dropped on to his head from the balcony of the apartment that Petmezci and Eyzaguirre occupied. The substance was caustic and caused the neighbor to experience severe burning pain. Petmezci apologized, reportedly explaining that he had been using paint thinner to remodel the apartment.

This past Sunday, the German newspaper Bild published the findings of a poll indicating that 62 percent of the German public fears a terrorist attack on their soil. The German Interior Minister, Otto Schilly, stated that there is no reason "to lapse into panic" but called for increased vigilance on this first anniversary of the opening volleys of a long war.

The terrorism jitters were not limited in Europe to the German incident last week. In two other incidents, officials in Sweden and the Netherlands arrested a total of nine men suspected of terrorism. This led European intelligence and police authorities to say they fear that the next wave of attacks by Islamic extremists might involve small operations that will be difficult to thwart.

As Americans and allies gather today to commemorate the tragic losses of 9/11, our sorrow must be tempered with alertness and resolve. The Islamic terrorist threat remains real and it is not only coming from external forces, as is apparent by events last week in Heidelberg.

If there is any lesson to be drawn from last week’s arrests, it is to underscore the criticality of a pro-active defense against terrorism and anti-terror measures in this ongoing war that must be fought with no historical precedent or standard.

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is a retired veteran of over thirty years of service in military intelligence who resides in Germany. He can be reached at defensewatch02@yahoo.com.

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Little True Progress on Improving Our Security

By William F. Sauerwein

The message I received from the 9/11 attacks underlined the fact that our federal government officials were derelict in their primary duties – and in the 12 months since that horrific day, they continue to be derelict. 

Despite a decade of warnings, threats and open attacks, federal agencies trivialized the problem. A decade of decimation has left the U.S. military ill-prepared for meeting its global responsibilities, including the war against terrorism. U.S. intelligence agencies remain hampered by the effects of a decade of budget cuts, misguided legislation and over-reliance on fancy technology. 

However, national security does not just include military and intelligence issues. It includes many other aspects, also largely ignored by our political leaders, who have done very little in the past year except talk about these problems.

Anyone who has read a newspaper or watched the TV news over the past decade will know this dreary list of attacks on the United States and the failure by the Clinton administration to recognize the escalating threat or to take effective action against it:

On Feb. 26, 1993, terrorists later linked to Osama bin Laden set off a bomb under the World trade Center, killing six and injuring over 1,000 people; two months later, in April 1993, Saddam Hussein supported an assassination attempt on former President George H.W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait. On Oct. 3-4, 1993, U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos find themselves in a major battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, where they suffer 18 deaths and 84 soldiers wounded fighting Somalis later discovered to have been trained by al Qaeda. Then came the Riyadh compound and Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, respectively, which again killed Americans but sparked no substantial reaction.

After our two embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked, almost simultaneously, on Aug. 9, 1998, demonstrating the growing sophistication of al Qadea terrorists, the Clinton administration’s response was to launch a hasty “pinprick” cruise missile attack on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and – mistakenly – a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

One inadvertent “victory” against al Qaeda – the thwarting of the Millennium 2000 plot to bomb sites in the United States, Jordan and Europe – must be credited to the incompetency of the specific terrorists involved. And, of course, things resumed their course the following year with the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in October 2000.

We have learned the cruelest confirmation of the consequences of this timidity, of course, from Osama bin Laden himself. Interviewed a month after 9/11 by the al-Jazeera TV network, bin Laden specifically underscored how his network was emboldened by the abrupt U.S. pullout from Somalia following the 1993 battle: “Our brothers with Somali mujahideen and God's power fought the Americans ... America exited dragging its tails in failure, defeat and ruin.”

Our government leaders are obligated not only to warn us of these threats, but also to protect us from them.

We can debate the details of the proper methods for accomplishing this mission, but we cannot ignore the underlying premise. Nor can we ignore the growing evidence that the federal government since 9/11 has done little to learn the lessons from that attack.

Following our unprecedented victory in Operation Desert Storm and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we began demobilizing. Defense spending was reduced significantly, and active-duty personnel were reduced by 40 percent. Warrior leaders were shunted aside and perfumed princes rose to the top of the military hierarchy. Social engineering took priority over readiness, and combat training became secondary to humanitarian missions.

Our intelligence agencies also suffered from budget cuts, particularly in the human intelligence (HUMINT) area. We relied on satellite imagery, communications intercepts and other high-tech gadgets as replacements for agents on the ground.  Legislation further hampered intelligence gathering because they could not use sources of “questionable character.” The most frustrating, and still prominent, problem is the bureaucratic interagency turf battles, which hinders sharing of information. 

These agencies are our eyes and ears, and without them we cannot devise adequate plans for confronting the threats.

The 9/11 attacks also demonstrated our lack of internal security, something well known before the attack. At least two years ago, a television special outlined the inadequacy of airport security, citing not only poorly-trained screeners, but inadequate x-ray machines as well. It seemed the biggest obstacle for overcoming these problems was a lack of funding. Screeners were poorly paid, causing a great turnover in personnel, and better x-ray machines were expensive.

It seems we have done little today in solving this problem, except to pay lip service.  We made the current screeners federal employees, with higher pay, but seem not to have improved training. When I hear of the weapons that are getting through security, it seems we have not learned.

Internal security begins at our borders, and in this our government has failed miserably. This begins with our embassies issuing visas like the express lane in a grocery store. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has failed to keep track of foreigners residing in this country, or apprehend those whose visas have expired – to the degree that the INS will be dismantled under ongoing Homeland Security legislation. The U.S. Border Patrol is undermanned and overwhelmed by the magnitude of its mission, yet a concrete solution still eludes the administration and Congress.

Our ports of entry remain vulnerable, and inadequately patrolled for the volume of traffic they handle. News reports continue to warn how little of incoming cargo is inspected – another potential disaster that should have sparked our government into action.

Not only the terrorists, but drug dealers, gun smugglers and other criminals as well, continue to exploit our porous borders.

Once the terrorists have penetrated our borders we must rely on “homeland defense” agencies. A full year after 9/11, our actual “homeland defense” capability remains a name with no substance, except for a color-coded warning system. Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies still do not effectively communicate, and seem in competition with each other instead. We have many high-profile targets ranging from nuclear reactors to local water supplies that must be secured. Adequately securing these sites requires an unprecedented cooperation between government agencies at all levels.

While our politicians go about posturing in front of the cameras and delivering memorials, the reality is something different. While the defense budget and “homeland defense” bills languish in Congress, the politicians vote themselves a pay raise, play election-year politics while our troops risk their lives in Afghanistan (and potentially Iraq), and avoid making the tough decisions that the ongoing terrorist threat mandates.

I see very little to celebrate on this one-year anniversary of 9/11.

Contributing Editor William F. Sauerwein retired as a first sergeant in 1994 after a 24-year Army infantry career that included combat service in Operation Desert Storm. He can be reached at mono@gtec.com.

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An Obscured Victory: Iran Is Encircled

By Andrea West

To listen to the American news media talk about the war on terrorism, it would seem that the United States is losing on all fronts. 

We don't have the benefit of “international opinion” in the form of the European Union’s blessing and the United Nations’ go-ahead. We hear constant leaks from nebulous sources in the Pentagon or the administration that make the entire war look like a no-go. In short, the war picture as seen from our Big Media is one of unrelenting gloom.

This view, however, does not give credit for some of our most outstanding achievements in the 12 months since 9/11.

For example, in the Sept. 9, 2002 issue of National Review online, columnist Michael Leeden makes an impassioned plea for the United States to come up with a coherent Iran policy. It is my contention that not only has the United States already done so, but that our actions against Iran have given us the most resounding success to date.

The first, and most notable, success is the risk factor that is now attached to sponsoring and using terrorist entities in Iran. In response to reminders that terrorist outfits camp out inside its borders, Iran recently made noises about reining in Hezbollah. With the recent attempt on the life of Afghani President Hamid Karzai being blamed on Iran-sponsored assassins, however, Iran is having trouble explaining itself. The incident underscores the country's history of underwriting terrorist groups, and justifies President Bush's inclusion of Iran in the “Axis of Evil.”

This is not to say that Iran won't use the threat of terrorist action as a deterrent against us. As Leeden notes, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini has threatened to reply to President Bush's criticism of the theocracy “in the heartland of America.” The threat is very real, as demonstrated by the Karzai assassination attempt. At the same time, the very issuance of the threat indicates that Khameini is feeling the pressure from the president's statement, and is playing the terror card to see if it slows us down.

Words are not the only thing that has the Iranian theocracy worried. A number of commentators have pointed out that we have troops in numerous locations in the Middle East, and that this undoubtedly does not sit well with Iran. Iran wants neither a permanent U.S. presence in the region, nor a free Iraq or Afghanistan to bolster U.S. interests in the region and serve as examples to the Iranian people.  What only a few people seem to have noticed, however, is that the United States is in a better position to contemplate an invasion of Iran than we are of Iraq.

If one examines a map of the region and compares it to a list of the countries in which we are known to have troops, it would seem that Iran, not Iraq, is the country that is actually surrounded by U.S. forces. Doubtless this has not escaped the notice of the Iranians, who may feel obliged to point out the reverse of this equation. The assassination attempt on President Karzai might also have a message for U.S. forces in the region: you may have us surrounded , but that means we have lots of handy places to strike.

Unfortunately for the theocracy, it has problems at home that further complicate the situation. These problems create an impression of weakness which erodes Iran's credibility.

Popular protests against the regime, most notably the July 9 demonstrations in Tehran, have underlined its unpopularity. The independent intelligence company Stratfor.com rightly points out that the number of protestors involved is not enough to seriously threaten the Iranian regime. What does threaten the mullahs is the fact that the protests took place despite a government decree that there would not be any such thing.

According to the independent Iran Press Service on July 16, 2002, these protestors took heart at President Bush's July 12 statements concerning the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran, in which he condemned the “unelected few [who] repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.” This speech, even more than the president’s “Axis of Evil” description in his State of the Union speech last Jan. 29, has created internal problems for the mullahs.

A recent article in National Review claims that “thousands" of Palestinians, Afghans and Arabs were used on July 9 to supplement Iranian security forces against the demonstrations, both in Tehran and in rural areas. Stratfor.com contends that elements of the Iranian security forces have even begun to turn on the regime, with the caveat that these troops may only be unwilling to fire on unarmed citizens. Even so, this represents a credible threat to the stability of the theocracy, since, as Stratfor.com points out, trained and armed security forces are a far cry from unarmed, dissident civilians.

With protests mounting at home and the failed assassination attempt against the pro-Western Karzai in Afghanistan, Iran has now turned to the international press in an effort to drag the EU into the argument. Iran hopes that international ambivalence about the war on terror and anti-Americanism in general will encourage the fence-sitters in Europe and elsewhere to take a stand against the United States.  So far, at least in the war of words, this scheme has had some measure of success.  What has failed to materialize is any form of opposition more concrete than words.

In any case, the United States has begun to work on relationships with other nations than the EU. In a recent essay in the British newsmagazine The Spectator, Mark Steyn points out the relationships that the United States is forging with China, Russia, India and the long-neglected Turkey. In addition, the United States is establishing bases and relationships with various Central Asian governments, as well as with other regimes in the Middle East (Turkmenistan and Oman come to mind).

These are the alliances that will strengthen our long-term position in the Middle East.  One should expect Iran to attempt to disrupt these friendships somewhere in the near future.

Iran, in short, is isolated, and the regime is feeling the pressure. The next few months will indicate whether the mullahs will continue a policy of confrontation with the United States, or whether they will try to maintain the self-preserving fiction of hardliners vs. reformers. While time is not on America's side with Iraq, the same does not seem true with Iran in terms of dealing with the United States.

Andrea West is DefenseWatch Veterans' Editor. She can be reached at defensewatchvet@yahoo.com.

Al Qaeda Winning Arab ‘Hearts and Minds’

By Robert G. Williscroft

As we remember the horrific events of 9/11 today, it is important to recall Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against us:

“We – with God's help – call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.”

“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”

With these words in February 1998, Osama bin Laden and his intellectual and religious mentor, Ayman al Zawahiri, launched global jihad against America and Americans.

The obvious immediate question is: Are these the ravings of two madmen out of touch with reality, or do these Fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) command the attention and actions of 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide?

Typical of the prevalent attitude is that expressed by Mahfouz Azzam, a prominent Egyptian lawyer. Azzam describes himself as uncle and godfather to Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command. Azzam sidesteps the issue by saying (as quoted in the Christian Science Monitor), “Ayman al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden have never confessed that they have committed any crime. I challenge the CIA or anyone to prove that they have confessed. They did say that they were pleased with the events of Sept. 11th because they thought maybe it would shock the U.S. into changing its anti-Islamic policies.”

According to Azzam: “Any American civilian who serves against our cause [to liberate Islamic lands] – defends, helps, or pays money against us – should be punished.”

Azzam is well educated, completely familiar with the United States and Western ways, and has a better than average understanding of things not Islam. Despite this, his view of America and the West in general is heavily biased towards the dogma emanating from the al Qaeda propaganda machine.

In an earlier article, “Target Al Jazeera - 'Information War' Weapon” (DefenseWatch, May 15, 2002), I discussed al Qaeda's preferred weapon, the Al Jazeera television network. Al Jazeera’s CNN-like program lineup has been the primary vehicle for feeding Muslims' desire to know across the world.

In recent months Al Jazeera has been reinventing itself to present a broader programming venue to its viewers. The new programs often completely ignore the underlying Al Jazeera message. These programs, which feature interviews and even humor, are in themselves harmless, and may actually result in some positive benefit for the American point of view. But their real intent is to draw an even larger Muslim audience which will then be exposed to a nearly continuous anti-American, anti-Semitic (Jewish), hate-filled agenda.

The true colors of Al Jazeera were revealed for the world to see on Sept. 10, 2002, when this al Qaeda propaganda machine aired a celebration of the events of Sept. 11, one year ago. It broadcast excerpts from a tape that it said would be aired completely on Sept. 12.

The tape showed four men Al-Jazeera says were among the hijackers during technical training in Afghanistan a few months before the 9/11 attacks. They were looking at detailed maps, including the Washington, D.C. area, and manuals of cockpit gadgetry. Nearby desks contained at least one computer and several books in English, and a hand pointed at the site of the Pentagon on one map. The men wore loose shirts and baggy pants in typical south Asian style. Their faces remained concealed.

Speaking over men singing Muslim hymns, a male voice sounding much like Osama bin Laden spoke in Arabic as the tape showed head shots of the 19 who hijacked the planes: “As we talk about the conquests of Washington and New York we talk about those men who changed the course of history and cleaned the records of the nation of the dirt of the treasonous rulers and their followers.” Later, the voice said the 19 hijackers were “great men who deepened the roots of faith in the hearts of the faithful and reaffirmed allegiance to Allah and torpedoed the schemes of the crusaders and their stooges, the rulers of the region.”

The speaker named four men – Mohammed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Hani Hajour and Ziad Jarrah – as the leaders of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, prayed for their souls, and praised them.

Fully 80 percent of all Muslims worldwide with access to television regularly watch Al Jazeera, and certainly saw this broadcast. That is over half a billion people who received this dose of hatred. This same half billion are regularly admonished by Al Jazeera guests “to kill the Americans and their allies” in a hundred different ways every single day.

Islamic terror groups now include: al Qaeda (international), Hamas (Palestine), Islamic Jihad (Palestine), Al-Aska Martyrs Brigade (Palestine), Hezbollah (Palestine), Jamaat al-Islammiyya (Egypt), Armed Islamic Group (GIA) (Algeria), Kashmir Militant Extremists (Kashmir), Abu Nidal Organization (Iraq), Chechnya-based Terrorists (Chechnya), Abu Sayyaf Group (Phillipines), and possibly others around the world.

Al Jazeera presents the members of these terrorist organizations either as unabashed heroes, or at least as devout Muslim freedom fighters. America and Israel are the primary designated terrorist organizations in these broadcasts. Al Jazeera commentators offer as proof, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the starvation and medical shortcomings of some of the Iraqi people, and the daily plight of the Palestinians.

Pearl Harbor receives no mention; the oil-for food program in Iraq strongly supported by the United States is ignored; and the continuing efforts of U.S. diplomats to broker a Mideast peace is ridiculed as two-faced and designed to topple Arafat.

The bottom line is that over half a billion Muslims receive a daily dose of twisted propaganda that they firmly believe to be true and accurate. In my DefenseWatch article on Apr. 3, 2002 (“Bid the Little Ones Come Unto Me - Forbid Them Not”), I introduced readers to a 15-year-old Arab youth living in London. I shared my month-long email exchange with this lad, in order to demonstrate the success that al Qaeda and its propaganda unit, Al Jazeera, have experienced during the last year. This lad had no concept of the world as it really is, but was fluent in regurgitating the Al Jazeera lies and distortions.

Across the Muslim world, virtually all Muslims believe America is the Great Satan, and that it must be destroyed, no matter the cost. This is not just an opinion. Anyone with the desire and resources can search the Internet and discover the extent of this “market penetration.”

Before and during World War II, the Nazis never came close to this kind of successful propaganda. Stalin and his follow-on minions could only dream of such effective molding of minds. Even the Roman Catholic Church cannot match this kind of world-wide mind control. When Rome has come up against incontrovertible fact, thinking Catholics have invariably changed the church. In the world of Islam, however, the church changes thinking Muslims – or kills them if they refuse to change, since increasingly disagreement with the prevailing thought pattern is interpreted as an apostate offense, punishable by death.

America's allies in Europe and elsewhere are backing away from their support of our war on terror. Increasingly, America is being presented as a bully flexing its muscles, instead of as an aggrieved party seeking justice. An increasing number of world leaders is looking to America as the underlying cause of terrorism. We are increasingly seen as immoral in our business and diplomatic dealings, unethical in our support of governments opposed by al Qaeda, duplicitous in our support of Israel, and evil in our desire to depose Saddam Hussein.

America hasn't a single apologist in the Arab world. Even Jordan and Egypt are sliding towards the prevailing mind-set. We are not losing the propaganda war – we have already lost it.

Were America to shut down Al Jazeera permanently, and to substitute reality for its lies and misrepresentations, we might stem the tide, but there is little chance that we can change what has already happened. The anti-American Jihad is a juggernaut that we cannot avoid. It's time to remove our collective heads from the sand and see reality as it is.

As we contemplate 9/11 and remember the thousands of American innocents killed around the world by these monsters, let's acknowledge that we have lost the information war, and make damn sure we don't lose the ground war as well.

Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at dwnavyeditor@argee.net.

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By Christian M. Weber

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saddam Hussein's imminent march towards Saudi Arabia 12 years ago brought a mighty U.S. military presence to the Arab Holy Land, an action which allegedly enraged Osama bin Laden and spurred his hatred of his former ally. In his eyes, as the story goes, the landing of “infidels” in the land of the Prophet was a desecration to the Holy Land and a flagrant abuse of the House of Saud's stewardship of Mecca and Medina, that was beyond dismissal.

Empowering himself with the ability to issues religious rulings, fatwas, he urged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia in 1996 and, again in 1998 called for attacks on American civilians. Donning the mantel of defender of the “faith,” akin to Islamic hero Saladin's title, “Defeater of the Crusades,” he launched the terrorist umbrella organization, the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Crusaders and Jews.

Yet unlike the noble Saladin, bin Laden has failed to follow even the most basic tenets of Islam.

Firstly, the Koran clearly states that the practice of suicide attacks, particularly the vile brand exercised on 9/11, is profoundly against the teachings of Islam.  According to Islamic law, martyrdom excludes death by ones own hand (suicide), and is only achieved through death in battle at the hands of ones enemy. Suicide is strictly forbidden in the Islamic faith and harshly punished:

“He who killed himself with steel would be the eternal denizen of the Fire of Hell … he who drank poison and killed himself would sip that in the Fire of Hell where he is doomed for ever and … he who killed himself by falling from a mountain would constantly fall in the Fire of Hell.... ” (Sahih Muslim, 48:1: 0199).

As the 9/11 hijackers are undoubtedly learning, the phase “Fire of Hell” is not interchangeable with the promised “seventy two virgins.” Legitimate fatwas by Shaykhs ibn Baaz, ibn Jabreen, and ibn Uthaymeen further reinforce the prohibition against suicide attacks and the hijacking of civilians.

Secondly, Islam prohibits Muslims from partaking of illicit drugs, referred to in the Quran as “abominations and the work of Satan” (5:90). Yet, The Golden Crescent countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan, bin Laden's lair of choice, are the world's largest producers of heroin, growing in excess of $50 billion in street value annually. 

Furthermore, The al Qaeda-Taliban regime actually formalized the revenue-generating aspect of opium production by imposing a ten percent zakat (tax) on all opium transactions.

Let us not forget bin Laden's chummy relationship with the late Somalia warlord and close al Qaeda ally, Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, who not only handed out the cocaine-like herb, khat, to his troops, but violated one of the five holy Pillars of Islam (Concern for and almsgiving to the needy) by withholding food shipments to starving Muslims.

Thirdly, and even more damning for bin Laden, is his regular dealings with communist China. Islamic extremists view the world in two distinct spheres, Dar al Islam (the abode of faith) and Dar al Harb (the abode of war). China clearly falls into the sphere of Dar al Harb, particularly in light of Beijing’s active and severe persecution of the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, a great many of whom served as mujhadeen during the Soviet Afghan War.

Osama bin Laden ignored the plight of his former Uighur brothers-in-arms and pursued extensive dealing with the Chinese government. The al Qaeda-Taliban regime overtly maintained ties with Beijing and paid China's Huawei Technologies to develop a limited telephone exchange in Kabul and Kandahar. A Libyan national who served as a liaison officer for al Qaeda elements in Italy went so far as to characterize the relationship between bin Laden and the Chinese, as “He [Bin Laden] works a great deal with China. He's got good relations with them.”

Bin laden has shown time and again flagrant disregard for Islamic law, and exhibited a willingness to work not only with drug dealers, but the persecutors of fellow Muslims. One must then wonder why this pillar of hypocrisy espouses such venom towards America.

Despite his abundant inherited wealth and business successes, bin Laden is a frail, gangly man wracked with poor health. His greatest triumphs in life have come, not on the battlefield (though his leg wound during the war has given rise to the warrior bin Laden myth), but from his financial association with the mujhadeen during the Soviet-Afghan War. He is clearly representative of those misfits of society whose only sense of significance comes from the attention garnered by perpetrating acts of self-aggrandizement.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait brought the opportunity for bin Laden to raise an army of mujhadeen to cast out a despised enemy and defend the Holy Land. Moreover, it brought the promise of leading an army of mujhadeen on the very sands once ruled by the Prophet Muhammad. 

The defeat of Iraq at the hands of bin Laden would have made him a hero as renowned as Saladin in the eyes of his countrymen. Such a victory would undoubtedly be a precursor to his mujhadeen unseating the House of Saud and creating an Islamic Caliphate as existed under Muhammad, with himself as caliph.

But the U.S. military success in Desert Storm vanquished bin Laden's hoped-for stardom and triggered his cataclysmic desire to destroy the United States. 

While there is no discounting that the strong American presence in the Holy Land, coupled with Saudi Arabia financing of Desert Storm, rankled devout Muslims, it was largely the derailment of his personal aspirations that spurred bin Laden’s hatred of America. 

Piety is clearly a cloak that bin Laden has loosely donned merely to mask his ambition and rally disciples to his banner. 

At some point, probably sooner for the miscreants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later for the rest of the Muslim world, they are going to see that this fiend is no warrior, no holy man, and certainly no Saladin.

It should be a major tactic of the U.S. war against terrorism to forcefully present this case to the Muslim world.

Contributing Editor Christian M. Weber is a 1st lieutenant specializing in military intelligence in the New York Guard, Civil and Military Affairs Division. He can be reached at LtWeberNYG@aol.com.

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Battle over Homeland Security Is Just Beginning

By Jim Simpson

The Bush administration plan for creating a new Homeland Security Department has been called a tactically shrewd political move – having stolen the Democrats’ thunder with a sweeping new idea. 

The proposal to keep the department non-union is politically bold and crucial to its mission. The plan also attempts to address interagency rivalry issues that have plagued law enforcement for years. Finally, it may instill a sense of “mission” in its employees that comes with starting fresh on a new and noble endeavor.

However, in integrating disparate and often competing institutional cultures and jurisdictional boundaries, as well as carrying out the huge technical job of merging all these bureaucracies together, an already overburdened federal security establishment will face a host of new challenges. The need to hire new people quickly and merge many sources of intelligence will also increase the likelihood of leaks and penetration by enemy agents.

Finally, even if these huge logistical problems are solved, they will all be for naught if the American people themselves fail to quickly overcome some deeply ingrained habits and misconceptions that remain a deadly threat to our collective security.

The federal law enforcement establishment on 9/11 was a conglomeration of over 70 agencies, each having statutory authority to enforce a limited subset of federal laws. A year later, it still is.

For example, the U.S. Customs Service enforces laws regarding movement of merchandise across our borders. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) enforces laws relating to movement of people across our borders. The Coast Guard enforces laws regarding movement of people and merchandise on the sea. The Bureau of Export Administration (BXA) shares jurisdiction with Customs on laws regarding export of dual use or military technology. 

Customs is in the Treasury Department while INS is under the Justice Department.  Coast Guard is part of the Department of Transportation (except in wartime when it shifts to the Navy Department), and the BXA is part of the Commerce Department. The list goes on ad infinitum.

In short: everybody gets into the act. But each does so in its own unique way and as a result of the explicit authority granted them by Congress. These prerogatives are guarded jealously and when there is overlapping authority wasteful turf battles ensue.

As a budget analyst for the White House Office of Management and Budget in the early 1990s, I reviewed activities of Treasury law enforcement agencies, i.e. Customs, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Secret Service and others. I would estimate that at least 50 percent of my time was spent trying to fathom and resolve turf issues that arose between Treasury (who referred to themselves as the government’s oldest law enforcement agency) and Justice (who constantly reminded us they were the government’s foremost law enforcement agency).

These interagency disputes, which sometimes reach the height of absurdity, are the reason agency consolidation plans have been proposed on and off for at least 30 years. As an administrative matter alone, such a consolidation is difficult enough.  The complexity and breadth of federal laws does not go away just because you consolidate the agencies tasked to enforce them. 

But then Congress gets involved and the problem increases exponentially. Needless to say, each time the proposals have been shelved. 

Appropriations and authorization committee members use agencies under their purview as vehicles for their personal agendas and guard their prerogatives more jealously than the agencies – if that is possible. Constituent groups develop with a vested interest in the agencies’ budget and statutory authority and with it an interest in the committee members’ political fortunes.

This is not altogether inappropriate: Those with a vested interest in agency activities should get involved. Freight forwarders, for example, are in a good position to inform Congress how a new proposed border security system will affect movement of goods across the border. 

But it is when committee members put the desires of their constituents above all else that problems arise. And that unfortunately, is still happening, a full year after 9/11.

Since the Bush proposal was unveiled, opponents in Congress have raised various objections – most notably the Democratic effort to force unionization on the agency – that may be the beginning of a campaign to kill the Homeland Security Department plan entirely. 

No one would dare challenge the president’s idea directly, given the sensitivity of the issue. Instead opponents are likely to pursue a strategy of “death by a thousand cuts,” raising first one objection, then another, then another, until the public loses interest.

But perhaps this is one time in our history where circumstances will conspire to achieve the near-impossible. A more likely danger is that even if the legislation passes – given current politics – we will still get a Department of Homeland Security that has been watered down to toothless ineffectiveness, but big and juicy enough to give congressional appropriators lots of excuses for new spending.

This is exactly what we need to avoid. 

The issue of employee unionization in the new department is a case in point.  Bush should be congratulated for having the insight and the courage to propose a non-union Homeland Security Department. Given the proposed law enforcement and intelligence functions, it is crucial for the government to retain flexibility in management, hiring and firing. One bad apple can compromise an investigation and sometimes cost lives. In the case of intelligence activities, a turned agent often costs lives and can threaten our national security. At best, ineffective or subpar agents would compromise critical national security functions. 

Federal employee unions have gained so much power that agency managers have virtually no authority to fire or otherwise discipline employees. Those who attempt to do so can face endless legal challenges and/or career threatening discrimination or sexual harassment charges and the like. Union rules on simple day-to-day work routines are arduously complex and restrictive.  Most managers just resign themselves to living with the problem. 

Despite these well-known facts, most Democrats have tied their political fortunes inexorably to the unions and so will probably choose politics over national security by insisting on unionization.

Even without the unions, there is little incentive for good management. Federal managers are also difficult to fire, especially those who ingratiate themselves to congressional committees. Political agency heads, fearing negative publicity or a fight with congressional opponents, don’t bother.  Good managers or conscientious agency heads face similar risks in trying to resolve institutional problems. To identify a problem risks being accused of creating it. Congressional oversight committees lunge at the opportunity for grand-stand hearings, despite the fact that in many circumstances, it is the activities and edicts of congressional and administration policy makers that caused the problem in the first place.

For example, Notra Trulock, the Energy Department’s intelligence chief during the Clinton administration, suffered relentless grilling in Senate hearings for daring to highlight the horrendous security hemorrhage at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the tenure of Secretary Hazel O’Leary. Senators publicly accused him of lying, though I doubt anyone on that committee seriously questioned the veracity of his testimony. That national interest would be subordinated to the political image of the president in even such an egregious case, did not come as a surprise. 

In such a working environment, a form of “Gresham’s Law” takes hold, where the bad and the incompetent employees drive out the good and the dedicated. Smart people stay away, courageous people leave, and fools stay on. 

For example, during informal discussions one day, Secret Service headquarters agents confided to us with a hint of pride that they probably contributed to warming relations between the U.S. government and Russia during the period of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Glasnost.”  “Why?” I queried. Because they explained, they had cozied up to the KGB and shared with them their methods for protecting the president. 

Shocked to speechlessness, I saw no point in observing that unlike America, the ruthlessly effective KGB has never lost a Soviet leader to assassination (unless the KGB planned it) and it is highly doubtful they would need our “help.”  But now, thanks to naively enthusiastic Secret Service bureaucrats, our potentially greatest adversary now fully understood how we protect our chief executive. Mind-boggling, but true!

Horror stories like these abound. 

So while employees of the new agency may be initially filled with a sense of excitement and mission, this will quickly be replaced with the futility and demoralization felt by agents of the FBI, CIA and others, whose conscientious efforts have been repeatedly met with indifference, hostility and outright resistance.

The examples are legion, and by this point, well known.  They do not bear further repetition.  What they all reflect is not an FBI riddled with incompetent managers (though it may be); not a CIA hidebound to bureaucratic prerogatives (though it may be); not an NSA overconfident of its SIGINT capability (though it may be); not a State Department riddled with traitors and spies (though it may be). 

What they do reflect is a crisis in political leadership.  The American people cannot afford to continue tolerating those in power who would enrich and empower themselves at the expense of our security and even survival.

In the wake of 9/11, the stakes could not be higher.

The Bush proposal for homeland defense accurately observes that in our open society, all energy, transportation and production infrastructures are very vulnerable to attack. So are our leaders. One or two well-placed suitcase nukes could effectively decapitate our leadership structure and throw the entire country into chaos. Such a scenario would leave us virtually defenseless. Who is smug enough to think that such a scenario might not embolden opportunistic adversaries to engage in nuclear blackmail or even launch an attack? 

The Homeland Security Department debate illuminates a deeper crisis in national political leadership that must be resolved.

It is astounding to me that some people still just don’t get it.

Contributing Editor Jim Simpson, a former White House budget analyst, is a widely published commentator on military and security issues. He can be reached at one.wonders@verizon.net.

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